Dead Ficus

My ficus is officially dead. I can't tell if it is caused by too much or too little water because all the other plants are still alive. But the ficus is sagging like a tired old man sitting outside a dressing room, waiting for his wife to try on the tenth shirt which looks like all the other shirts in which she just posed for him.

"It's been a good couple of months," my boyfriend proclaims and rather congratulates me on the success of the plants that are still alive. He knows as well as I do that I am hopeless with plants, maybe even more so than he is. And I am proud of this minor achievement, a step in the right direction, but at the same time I can not let go of the failure, the stains in my success. That's just the kind of animal that I am.


Meanwhile I am three out of over two hundered. I am one of three for the position of a life time. The kind of job that no one gets, not in my position anyway. I am the candidate least qualified for the position, of this I'm sure. Not sure like in "I pity myself" but sure because the man sending me to the interview told me so. He said I had spirit and ambition but not sufficient experience. He said he believed I was the best candidate but that chances are that they don't. People stare themselves blind on experience, he said. And contacts, I added in silence.

He told me I am his favorite candidate. That out of over two hundered, cut to ten, then to five and three, I am his favorite. I don't care that he probably tells all three candidates this, I really needed to hear it. After all the dissapointments, the deceits and unfairness that comes from the position I am in, it felt like coming up for air when you are suffocating.

Even if I don't get the job I am very content. I am proud that I got this far. I never thought it possible after what I've learned these past couple of months. And I take solace in the fact that you can get far with honesty and hard work. It feels comforting.

But I am very much like my ficus. Usually I drown in the water, having too much experience. Otherwise I dry out, having too little experience. This interview felt very dry. I'm fairly sure I'm not getting this job, it all adds up to that. Never the less I have had a good experience and I've regained faith in something I thought I'd lost.